See attached PPTDESIGNING ONLINE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Designing Online Learning Environment

Designing Online Learning Environment

E-learning is the newest trend recently being implemented in the business and education industry. E-learning means learning over the intranet/internet and this can be done at the learners' real time or at own place (LiNE Zine, 2001). Regardless of the self pace learning and flexibility, e-learning has been an attack for several companies as millions of dollars have been spent on the infrastructure and technology to put into practice online learning but many corporate learners had registered the courses and they did not stay to complete it. At Motorola University, sixty nine percent students had dropped out (The New Corporate University Review, 2003). The attrition rate (the number of students enrolled in the course dwindles) was alarming for many companies including Toyota, GE Capital, New York Online University (NYUonline), Corporate University Xchange Inc and others.

The term e-learning is not very precise, and it should be pointed out that learning is just one element of education. So, the term online education should cover a much broader range of services than the term e-learning. One may also claim that e-learning companies often focus on course content, while online education institutions cover the whole range of educational services.

According to Workforce Management (2003), many online learners neglect their courses complaining that they don't have enough time as some of the courses could only be viewed on the company's intranet and the distraction from the other colleagues made it impossible to complete the course during working hours. The importance of completing the course was not clearly emphasized by the management and the immediate supervisor and the course instructor did not check on the learners' performance thus resulting in de-motivation for the students.

The courses were poorly designed and certain aspect of the modules weren't relevant to the employees' job. The course could not be customized according to the learners preference, for instance they were not given a choice of information delivery, i.e. in audio or text.

The e-learning technology is new to most of the employees and a shocking number of them did not know how to go about using the program as the guidelines were brief and insufficient especially to the computer illiterates. The students could not depend on their instructors as some then were inexperienced, thus they were not an ideal source of knowledge for the students.

Furthermore, many corporate learners felt isolated during the learning process. Especially those who underwent asynchronous course left rather distant and boredom began to envelope them, whereas in synchronous courses, employees completion rate were by far much better. At Sun Microsystems and NYUonline completion rates rose up to 75% with synchronous courses, however, the remaining students felt that the participation level of interaction and collaboration was low.

To further enhance Workforce Management (2003) findings, both The Learning Guild (2003), and University of Glasgow (2003) had used Vincent Tinto's Retention Model to explain that learners withdraw from their courses either from academic or social ...